Let the Music Tame the Beast Inside of You
by Alice Annette
Summary: This is my version of what would have happened in New Moon if Jake hadn’t made it to save Bella after she jumped off the cliff. She doesn’t drown, but she’ll wish she had! Rated Mature for violent content and possibly a little lemon.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters in this story, or the series it is based on! All that belongs to Stephenie Meyer. This is purely fan fiction.**

This was it. The end. I was drowning, and there was nothing I could do about it.

My lungs burned for air as the currents pulled me this way and that. I couldn't hear, I couldn't see, and I could do nothing to reach the surface. But I wasn't alone. I could see Edward's glorious face clearly, his golden eyes furious. I could hear him, saying my name again and again in anger, and the delusion was so realistic that I half expected him to pull me from the icy depths.

That's when I felt the violent tug.

There were fingers tangled in my hair. Fingers so cold it made the freezing water a warm bath in comparison. My head broke the surface, and a pain even greater than that in my lungs exploded through my neck as I felt the muscles tear from the force of the hand pulling me up. My eyes opened wide as I coughed up salty water and gasped in a sharp, stinging breath. How I could still be conscious was beyond me. The pain in my neck and chest was maddening, and what I saw next just didn't make sense.

Red. Lots of red. Bright, fire red.

...Then I recognized hair, and the face below it.

I tried to scream, but my throat was too sore to make a sound.

Victoria.

R&R please! I've got a great story lined up, but I won't add more chapters until they're requested.


	2. Chapter 2

**Edwards POV**

My phone rang.

I couldn't remember the last time I had bothered to check the numbers trying to reach me, but they seemed especially persistent today, pulling me out of my miserable stupor. The image of Bella's broken expression wavered as my mind shifted, attempting to rekindle my motor functions. The room around me slowly came into focus, the rotten beams only a few feet from my face, the babble of Spanish voices from somewhere far below me.

The scuttle of rats searching for parasites to feed on.

I hit send and waited.

"It's about time you answered your phone!"

I sighed. I knew I couldn't avoid Alice forever.

"What do you want?"

Her words were a flurry of anger. "I want to save her, but since you're the one who decided we should all leave her defenseless in Forks, I suppose it's your choice."

A thousand different possibilities ran through my mind. My voice came out panicked, the first real bit of emotion I'd shown in months. "What wrong? What's happened to her?"

Alice's voice came quietly, all traces of anger gone.

"Bella jumped off a cliff."

The words didn't make sense to me. At the sound of Bella's name, I felt elated in my drowning state, and the pain was like sharp relief compared to the numb emptiness I'd felt for so many months. For a moment her broken expression was a smile drifting in my vision. It distracted me from whatever she had said. Her words just wouldn't register in my mind.

"I don't understand what you're trying to say, Alice."

"Is it really that hard to figure out? You know how much you hurt her when you left Edward. She threw herself off of a cliff. She nearly drowned."

Mad panic at first. I could feel that Alice was avoiding something. Had I a functioning heart, it would be throbbing madly in my chest. I relaxed slightly at the last part.

"Nearly drowned? So she's fine. She probably tripped, I'm sure Charlie will have her taken care of." My voice sounded much more pleading than confident, even to my ears.

"Victoria has her, Edward."

My phone clattered to the ground. I was frozen, my mind in complete and utter shock. Then a horrific snarl tore from my throat, echoing through the filthy emptiness around me. I hardly registered the surprised shrieks of the people living below. I snatched the phone back into my hand, nearly breaking it as I brought it instantly back to my ear.

"How did this happen, Alice?" I hissed the words through clenched teeth.

"She was circling the territory. She happened to be swimming right when Bella chose to jump off of the cliff. There was a storm and the currents took Bella under, there was nothing she could do to get to the surface. She was trapped, and Victoria came out of nowhere at the last possible moment and tore her from the water."

I felt like I was changing all over again, except that the unbearable pain touched deeper, lancing through my soul rather than my body. Even in my enraged state, I could manage no more than a whisper.

"…But… She's still… Alive…"

Please, I thought. PLEASE.

"Victoria has no intention of killing her."

Through the agony I felt confusion. What could Victoria want with her, if not to take her life? "Then why…?"

"She's going to change her, Edward."

My decision was made. It was only a matter of time before I went crawling back to her, anyways. It was hard to think through the torrent of emotion clouding my thoughts, the most prominent being complete hatred for myself. I should have known better than to leave her there alone.

"Where are they?"

Alice sounded relieved, as though she had actually doubted that I would want to rescue my beloved. "I can see a concrete room with no windows. It's in a city, there are lots of lights and people… somewhere in Seattle."

My entire body was coiled, like a viper ready to strike. "I'll meet you at the airport."

"I'll be waiting."

The shattered remnants of my cell phone clattered to the floor in the empty attic. As the echo faded, I was already half a mile away. "Bella… Please hold on." I whispered as I ran faster than I had ever run in my life.

How could I have left her?

**R&R please! I'm SO sorry it's taken me so long to get a new chapter out, I just wrote it today. I've been completely bogged down with finals, but schools over so now I can indulge in my social life, and writing, of course.**

**I'll have a new chapter in a couple of days. Hope you all are enjoying the story so far, and I do love reviews, so please, leave some.**

**Love,**

**Annie.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Sorry this took so long, I've been busy. I think I'm going to start devoting my after midnight hours to new chapters. Thank you for your patience.**

Bella's POV

At first I thought I was still dreaming, yet the ache throbbing through my body was all too real to be a figment of my imagination. I tried to swallow past the sandpaper that was my throat, and coughed instead. The pain that seared through not only my throat but my neck as well sent hot tears spilling out of my eyes. I was lying on my back on something that felt like a bed, and my eyes were open - I knew this much, as I blinked several times to set my tears free – but I could see only darkness. Had I gone blind? Could I be dead? No, death couldn't be this painful, and I had never done anything to earn me eternity in Hell. Or had I? Was falling in love with a vampire a sin worthy of punishment by Satan himself? Somehow, I didn't think so.

At the thought of Edward, fresh tears spilled from my eyes, and a forlorn sob tore from my throat. I welcomed the searing pain this time, willing it to drown out my thoughts, the ache in my heart. If not in Hell, than where was I? I felt like there was something vitally important that I was missing. I closed my eyes, willing the ache in my head to subside long enough to allow a moment of clarity.

I had jumped off the cliff. I had nearly drowned. Yet I was alive. I couldn't make sense of it, and when I tried to, all I could think of was red. What was red, a fire truck? But why would a fire truck be sent to save me if I was drowning? Red… red… what's red…?

I gave up and instead let my thoughts wander to Edward, thinking of the time I had spent with him, of his velvet voice, of the anger in it when I was being tossed this way and that by the current. I had forgotten precisely how comforting his voice was, how it soothed me when nothing else could. The last time I had heard him that angry was at the baseball game, when James, Laurent and Vic- I froze. Red. What's red.

I started hyperventilating, ignoring the pain in my chest. I clutched at the sheets to stop my hands from shaking as my wide eyes searched the blackness. The pain subsided as adrenaline burst into my system, driven by my fear of this place, of who could be here with me. MUST be here with me. As if on cue, a hiss came from the darkness, and a light flicked on. I shut my eyes to protect them from the searing white light, and then left them closed, willing myself to be dead; anything but this. Hell would be better than this.

"Rise and shine, princess." Victoria hadn't spoken a word that day in the field, yet her voice sounded all too familiar to me, all to like the voice that had haunted my dreams since learning she was after me.

I shuddered, knowing there would be no one to save me this time. Resigned to my death, I opened my eyes to face it with courage. At the sight of Victoria, of her black, hungry glare, of her somehow cat like demeanor, her flowing, fiery red hair, I simply shut my eyes again. I would have turn my head away, but my neck felt locked in place, and when I tried to move it, white hot agony blazed through the muscles. So I simply lay there like I child waiting to be struck, my eyes shut tight, clutching handfuls of the rough sheets in a death grip.

"Where's your pretty boyfriend?" she sneered, like a jealous school girl talking to the arch enemy who stole her first crush. I didn't think anything could overcome my fear at this point, but I surprised myself as my anger flared, and I opened my eyes, glaring at her defiantly. I said nothing.

She smiled a victorious smile and came slowly towards me, like a cheetah slowly creeping along before launching into attack. Instead she simply sat on the edge of my bed in a lightning fast motion, the black tunnels that were her eyes boring into mine. Her perfect brow creased in frustration, and I vaguely wondered what she saw there that had irked her. But the expression smoothed almost instantly, and she spoke softly like a mother to a sleeping child.

"Oh, you poor thing… Did he leave you all alone? How frustrating, to think that I lost my mate over a mere trinket like you… Why, he didn't leave you any protection at all, did he? What did you do to drive him away? Did you find a human that appealed to you more than him?"

To my horror, more tears fell from my eyes. "N-n-no…" I stammered in a scratchy voice, trying not to cough.

Victoria smiled coldly at this, and the smile turned into a terrifying grimace that bared her shiny, perfect, venom coated teeth.

"I guess he didn't care for you as much as I thought… Yet he must, still, if he left you alive. I'll never understand his coven; how they can be so in touch with human emotion."

That stumped me. Why HAD Edward left me alive? I was so appealing to him… No. His parents. He must not have wanted to disappoint Carlisle and Esme. The little flame of hope that he still cared for me went out in a puff of acrid, unforgiving smoke. I was nothing to Edward.

Victoria studied me a moment. She seemed to be enjoying the pain in my expression. This reignited my anger, and I found my voice again, gravelly and unpleasant as it sounded. "You win, then. Kill me. Get it over with."

She smiled, baring those horribly perfect teeth once more. "No… I don't think I'm going to kill you, Bella." She sounded amused, like I was missing something incredibly obvious.

"Then why am I here? Why have you been hunting me? Why did you drag me out of the water?"

She smiled wider. In a movement too fast for my eyes to follow, she snatched my wrist, pressing it to her face. She inhaled deeply, gripping me too hard to allow me to shiver at the coldness of her touch, or in fear. I felt my bones would snap beneath her slender, snowy fingers if she even marginally increased the pressure.

"Killing you wouldn't be good enough. Your life is hardly worth the life of my mate, who died at the hands of your friends… No. Killing you would be much too simple, much too fast. If I want to get back at Edward…" She smiled wider as I winced at the sound of his name, and repeated it our of sheer cruelty. "If I want to get back at your precious Edward, I need to do something much more lasting than that. I want to savor my victory. For eternity."

I watched in wide eyed horror as her venomous teeth sank into my wrist. I waited for the door to burst open, for one of the Cullen's to burst in and save my life. No one came. No one was going to save me this time. With that final thought, the pain hit me, the burning in my veins, and the ache in my throat was nothing but the distant ghost of a memory. When I screamed, I could taste the tang of my own blood in the back of my throat. Distantly, I heard Victoria's shrill, soprano laughter, echoing in the windowless room as I writhed on the bed, the painful beginning of my last three days as a human.

**Hope you enjoyed it, R&R please!**

**Annie.**


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